reWrite

interactive language based installation

The focus of an artwork such as reWrite is identity. The work addresses this theme through the use of interactive systems, where the relationship between the viewer and the artwork is explicit and active. This act of interaction functions to raise questions concerning being and, through the process of communication, the linguistic foundations of identity.

...

Language artworks, such as reWrite, map an exploration of the manner in which this dynamic of differentiation through reading/writing can be disturbed and opened up as a conscious process. The primary element in this strategy has been the use of auto-generative texts, where the text appears correctly written and to be concerned with a particular subject but where there has been no authorial role other than the processes of a mechanised writing. The intent here is to create instances of textuality where the text is written of itself. That is to say, the text is generated as a function of language itself. Authorial intent is absent, replaced by a process of auto-generative writing.

Whilst there is a distinction to be made between writing and the production of meaning when we engage a text we nevertheless expect it to be meaningful and for that to be a function of intent. When this expectation is disturbed semiosis and writing become disassociated. In the absence of a writer or intended meaning all the reader has available is the option to contemplate their own act of reading. In reWrite the viewer thus observes themselves (as a double reflection) reading endlessly self-generating texts.

(Source: Excerpted from the Artist's statement on the project site)